Tag Archives: Traditional and contemporary songs

Martyn Wyndham-Read has been involved with folk music for over 40 years. In his late teens he left his mother’s farm in Sussex and headed off, with his guitar, to Australia where he worked on a sheep station in South Australia. It was while he was there that he heard, first hand, the old songs sung by some of the station hands at Emu Springs and he became captivated by these songs and the need to know more of them and where they came from grew.

Martyn headed off to Melbourne and became part of the folk song revival there and throughout Australia during the early1960s. Based back in the UK, he has toured worldwide, performing a variety of traditional and contemporary songs. Martyn is accompanied by box player Iris Bishop.

Tickets £11 (£8 club members) can be reserved via the email link on our contacts page. Bring your own drinks. Coffee and teas available in the kitchen.

Award winning trio Said The Maiden are Jess Distill, Hannah Elizabeth and Kathy Pilkinton, three friends who discovered a mutual love of folk music when they reunited several years after spending their school years together in Hertfordshire. After tentatively performing a few songs at their local Redbourn Folk Club, the group soon gained a great deal of interest on the local and national folk circuit, securing major support and headline slots at folk clubs and festivals around the country.

Said the Maiden have also opened for many great artists including The Full English, The Fisherman’s Friends, Jim Moray, Megson, Martin Carthy, Clannad, Cara Dillon, False Lights and Fairport Convention. They were also honoured to join legendary fiddler the late Dave Swarbrick on a successful UK solo tour in the spring of 2014, and released their debut album ‘A Curious Tale’ in June of the same year. In 2016, the group went on to release their EP ‘Of Maids And Mariners’, which was met with critical acclaim across the folk community and in 2017 the trio won the Folking Awards ‘Rising Star’ prize.

“Rising doyennes of the folk scene … I can hear why Said The Maiden have already made themselves a healthy reputation, and I can also sense a strong measure of untapped potential.” (David Kidman, FATEA Magazine)

Tickets £11 (£8 club members) can be reserved by emailing us via the form on the contact page. Bring your own drinks. Teas and coffee available in the kitchen.

On Friday 27 October the song session theme will be Halloween. Tenuous connections to the theme are equally welcome.

The James Brothers come from the lands down under – Australia and New Zealand to be precise; lands in which the traditional songs and tunes of the British Isles have evolved their own unique characteristics. And it’s these songs and tunes, and several of their own making, that The James Brothers have united to play.

Sydney-born James Fagan is best known as one half of Nancy Kerr & James Fagan (musically and maritally), but also spotted playing guitar and bouzouki in The Cara Dillon Band, the live circus that is Bellowhead and with his parents and sister as The Fagans, where his folk career began.

Jamie McClennan is a Kiwi who found himself in a duo with Scotland’s BBC-award-winning Emily Smith (whom he also married) having chosen not to follow his first bandmates to Ireland, where they formed the much celebrated Gráda.Jamie has been sighted on fiddle, whistle and guitar next to the likes of Sharon Shannon, Beth Nielson Chapman, Jerry Douglas and his mum.

Tickets £11 (£8 club members) can be reserved by emailing via our contact page. Bring your own drinks – teas and coffee available in the kitchen.

On Friday 28 July we welcome showcase guest and New Roots 2017 finalist Clarke Camilleri,a young guitarist and songwriter, and a keen student of traditional folk music. Clarke has a recent EP of his own material and his current interest is in making his own arrangements of traditional British songs.

Clarke, who was one of our favourite New Roots performers this year, will be performing two sets within the song session.

This is a free event. As usual, bring songs, tunes and perhaps a bottle or two. Teas and coffee will be available in the kitchen.

Norwich Folk Club meets from 8 pm every Friday throughout the summer for the regular song session. Everyone is welcome to come along, whether to sing, play or listen, and we particularly enjoy meeting visitors to the area. Free entry to all song sessions.

Please note that the song session on Friday 1 September will be in the cosy upstairs room, for one week only.

On Friday 7 July we welcome the much loved trio Risky Business, who have come together again for a special tour this summer. Ruth Fuga, Ken Powell and Dave Walmsley first formed the band over 20 years ago, after they had each had successful individual music careers. The group toured together for ten years and made four great albums.

Both Ken Powell and Dave Walmsley are skilled multi-instrumentalists and provide the harmonies supporting Ruth Fuga’s clear lead vocals. The Risky Business repertoire is eclectic and includes many of Dave’s own carefully crafted songs. Mendocino

In the intervening years, Dave Walmsley has carved a new career with the band Other Roads and tours throughout the year, both at home and abroad. Ken Powell has spent the last eight years developing his business as a luthier, creating new guitars, gasoukis and mandolas, and Ruth Fuga has continued to sing alongside Ken. Now married, Ruth and Ken live in Wales and put on the Llanwddyn Folk and Acoustic Festival every September.

Please let us know via the contact page if you would like us to put you on the list for tickets (£11, £8 members). Bring your own drinks. Teas and coffee in the kitchen.

Over the last three years they have built a reputation on the UK folk scene for arresting and moving performances. The songs themselves are always given centre stage but they are brought to life with sensitive musical arrangements and stunning vocals. There is an integrity that shines through their performances and a common thread of political struggle, resistance and justice.

Jimmy and Sid have been heavily influenced by the songs and singers of East Anglia, where they both grew up, but their music also reflects the diversity of voices within the folk world. Shallow Brown/Jackie Tar

Tickets £11 (£8 members) will be available on the door. All our events start at 8 pm. Bring your own drinks – teas and coffee available in the kitchen.

On Friday 24 March we welcome Two Coats Colder as showcase guests at our song session. The band name derives from an expression used by a North Norfolk local describing the winter weather in those parts.

This acoustic folk band comprises Ray Taylor and Anna Bass, originally of Samphire, joined since 2012 by Chris Bullen of the Marina Florance Band and David Baird, a longtime friend and accomplice of John Martyn. Two Coats Colder have appeared at festivals, folk clubs and other venues. Their first full-length album Unseen Highway was released in 2015 and a track was featured on the Mike Harding Show. The band is currently working on a second album, Moment in Time.

Two Coats Colder will perform two sets during the song session. Please bring songs and tunes of your own to add to the mix, as well as your own drinks. Teas and coffees are available in the kitchen. This is a free event.

On Friday 13 January we welcome the first guests of 2017, Moore Moss Rutter. A series of remarkable gigs has heightened the sense of anticipation around the reunion of Jack Rutter (Seth Lakeman Band), Tom Moore (False Lights) and Archie Churchill-Moss (Beyond the Marches) in the trio that won them the 2011 BBC Radio 2 Young Folk Award. The intervening years have seen them play with some of the biggest and best acts in English folk music, and now they reconvene to release the follow-up to their much acclaimed debut album.

Widely regarded as three of the best players of traditional folk amongst a precociously gifted generation, their music features ancient traditional material from Britain as well as newly composed tunes and songs, and focuses on their own movements from the countryside to large cities, and the contrasts that come into play.

Tickets £11 (club members £8) can be reserved via the form on our contact page. Bring your own drinks – teas and coffee available in the kitchen.

Andy Irvine is one of the great Irish singers, with a voice that gets to the very soul of Ireland. He has been hailed as ‘a tradition in himself’. Musician, singer, and songwriter, Andy has maintained his highly individual performing skills throughout his 45-year career. From Sweeney’s Men in the mid 60s, to the enormous success of Planxty in the 70s and then from Patrick Street to Andy Irvine & Dónal Lunny’s Mozaik, Andy has been a world music pioneer and an icon for traditional music and musicians.

‘As a soloist, Andy fills the role of the archetypal troubadour with a show and a travelling lifestyle that reflect his lifelong influence’, Woody Guthrie.

To quote the Irish Times, ‘Often copied, never equalled’, his repertoire consists of Irish traditional songs, dexterous Balkan dances and a compelling cannon of his own self-penned songs.

This event is now SOLD OUT.

Song sessions every Friday between guest nights. Free entry. All welcome, whether to sing, play or listen.

Twice nominated as Best Folk Singer in the BBC Folk Awards, Bob Fox has long been a favourite on the live circuit. Bob played the role of SONGMAN in The National Theatre’s multi-award-winning West End production of WarHorse 2011–13 and subsequently in the highly acclaimed and record-breaking UK, Ireland and South Africa touring version which ended in February 2015. Since then Bob has returned to the concert platform and now presents an ‘Evening with the War Horse Songman’ show.

Join Bob as he performs the songs from WarHorse in their full versions, linked by snippets of the story, with additional material from the BBC Radio Ballad of The Great War and favourites from his own personal repertoire.

Tickets £13 (£10 members) can be reserved via the contact form on this site. Please bring your own drinks – teas and coffee are available in the kitchen. Doors open at 7.30 pm.